From the desk of Roy Furr, March 31st, 2009
If you want to improve conversions on your website, there are 3 things you can tweak.
Here’s a quick 6 minute audio where I explain what they are… and how you can improve them for more conversions and more profits from your website.
(download)
Let me know what you think!
Posted in Copywriting, Google Website Optimizer, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, March 24th, 2009
In the article below I reveal a surefire (and remarkably simple) technique for finding out if people search for your type of business on Google. Use this technique before you spend a penny to determine if building a website for your business will be a profitable investment.
Internet marketing firms and website builders will usually tell you every business needs a website… especially when they’re trying to sell you something.
Well… Contrary to popular belief…
There are still a solid cases for some businesses not to be online… yet.
In fact today I’d like to show you a simple method for determining if people search for your type of business online. This can be the key determining factor in deciding whether or not to invest in a website for your business.
We’re going to use a tool called the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It’s free to use, and located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
This tool exists to tell you a few things. One, how many people search for specific terms, or keywords, that you’re interested in. Two, what keywords are similar to the ones you’re interested in. And three, what sort of advertising competition exists on the keywords you’re researching.
I’m going to show you how to use it to find something else.
I’ll show you how to discover how many people search for your type of business on Google. Because if nobody’s going to Google to search for your type of business, it’s probably NOT worth putting a website online for it. However, if there ARE a lot of searches on Google for your type of business, then you absolutely SHOULD have a website so you can be found over your competitors.
So let’s jump in and check out this tool…
When you first hit the website you see something like this:
We’re going to do our work on the right-hand side of that box.
Start in the box where it says “Enter one keyword or phrase per line:” and enter a general word that describes your type of business.
Start very general here.
If you have a Chinese Dim Sum Restaurant, type in just “restaurant.”
Below that you could type “Chinese restaurant” and “Dim sum restaurant” too, if you’d like. But be sure to include the general overarching category for your type of business.
Also leave the “Use synonyms” check box checked and the tool will give you a more general picture of your market online.
Then follow the instructions and type in the characters you see in the picture — this is Google’s way of making sure you’re a human using their tool and not just a computer program designed to yank out data and abuse the system.
You do not have to use the “Filter my results” link.
Then click “Get Keyword Ideas.”
Next, you should see something like this:
Now we’re going to do a very minor but important step, and that’s sort the results. Click on the words “Approx Avg Search Volume” at the top of the second column from the right to sort by that stat (it’s my preferred stat to sort by because it represents search trends over time).
So that should give you something that looks like this:
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Like I just said, I like to look at the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column because I think that represents the most reliable data over time. The number you see is an approximation of how many searches are done on Google in a month that contain that keyword.
So in an average month, people will type “restaurant” into Google 24.9 Million times…
In an average month people will type the words “italian restaurant” into Google 550,000 times…
And one of our keywords, “chinese restaurant” will be searched for in an average month 450,000 times…
That’s a lot of people searching for restaurants!
Of course, based on my default settings this is a snapshot of the entire United States (sorry, can’t drill down any further) so you have to take it as what it is.
However, if you consider that the population of the United States is about 300 Million people, that means every month there’s roughly 1 Google search for restaurant for every 12 people you see out walking around.
Of course, when you look at “Chinese restaurant” specifically, there’s only 1 search for every 660 or so people every month (.15%). However, let’s imagine that you’re the first website that comes up when someone searches for “Chinese restaurant” in your local area. If you can leverage this position to get .15% of your local population to visit every month, you’re getting incredible ROI from your website.
Let’s do some quick math.
.15% of 250,000 (small local population) is 375, multiply that by a $30 average ticket — because they didn’t come alone — and you get $11,250 per month from your website. Even if only half of those are new customers who come because of your website, that’s $5,625 per month from your website. Now that math won’t work out 100%, but it starts to make an investment of a few thousand in a website seem very reasonable.
I would say unequivocally that if you have a restaurant — whether it’s Italian, Chinese, or some other cuisine — that you should have a website.
Now let’s look at another — smaller — industry
Let’s try this same thing for “pet grooming.” I’ll include “cat grooming” and “dog grooming” too because those are the two primary niches within pet grooming. I’ve gone fast forward through the steps above to get the sorted results:
Because this is a smaller industry, let’s take my technique one step further.
In the restaurant industry I omitted this step because it quickly became clear how much opportunity there is for a local business to build a business website that would return high ROI.
In a smaller industry like pet grooming, taking this extra step will help you determine how much opportunity is actually available — when a quick snapshot doesn’t give you the confirmation you need.
It’s as simple as adding it up.
So at a quick look, here are the relevant keywords with their approximate average search volume (I’m omitting keywords that look like “do it yourself” searches because these are not customers for a pet grooming service):
If my math is right, that’s 591,700 searches per month across these keywords. Which is more than the 450,000 searches I based my math for “Chinese restaurant” on above. So even though 368,000 is smaller than the number for Chinese restaurant, it becomes clear quickly that there is a lot of opportunity for a local business to put a website online in the pet grooming business.
Quick side note: If you have a high customer value (let’s say $5,000 per customer instead of $30) then you don’t need traffic anywhere near these levels to make your website pay off. In a case like that just getting one or two customers from your website can make an investment of a few thousand be worth every penny and more.
And now for an industry that may not need a website.
I had to rack my brain and do a few searches and I could be wrong on this, but I did find one industry that my technique suggests may not need a website for your local business.
If you run a business that exclusively teaches aerobic fitness classes (not a gym with classes, just classes alone), then the opportunity may NOT exist for you to create a local website for your business that will be profitable.
Here’s a snapshot of traffic stats for “fitness classes” and “aerobics classes” and related keywords:
As you can see, the numbers there just don’t add up to anything that makes sense. So I wouldn’t suggest building a website to promote a business that exclusively offers aerobic fitness classes — at least not without some more research.
So there you have it!
Use this technique as you decide the answer to the question, “Should my business have a website?”
It’s a definite way of finding out if people are searching for what you’re offering online. And if there’s enough traffic you can be reasonably confident that your local business can build a website that will pay off dividends.
Of course there’s more to the story.
How to do it? What to put on the website? Who to have help?
Those are questions to be answered a different day. Stay tuned.
- Roy Furr
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, March 11th, 2009
I got an email this morning with a subject line that said:
Receive a free white paper if you act by March 31st!
DELETE!
Failure. Failure to connect. Failure to inform. Failure to sell. Wasted investment of time and energy and probably money.
And another marketer left scratching their heads saying…
“I used the word free, how come it didn’t work?”
As my reader, I’m sure you’re smart enough to spot the error in that subject line, and certainly would do better yourself. But just in case you haven’t had your morning cup of coffee, I’ll take a moment to explain… and then tell you how I’d do it differently.
Wait…
So as I’m writing this I go back to my trash basket to pull out the offending email.
And…
It turns out it’s not trying to get me to download a white paper at all. Bigger fail! It’s for a service provider who among other services will write white papers for me.
Here’s why this is a great big failure. I thought — from the moment I read the subject line — that this was an email trying to get me to download and read a white paper.
My original complaint was…
… that I had no clue what the white paper was about…
… had no clue how reading this white paper would benefit me…
… and no clue why the heck I should waste my time even opening the email to find out what they had for me if they wouldn’t tell me up front!
Still all completely relevant feedback… if the email is selling a white paper download. However, now that I know the email is selling something different…
Back to the actual content of their email…
Here’s the real offer (rephrased to protect the still-guilty — I’ll explain in a minute):
We’re a great company with a new lead nurturing program. Give us a lot of money and we’ll put all this together for you:
- eBook on a topic you choose
- Syndication and promotion of eBook and weekly leads report
- 3 custom white papers to compliment eBook and sell product
- Minimum lead guarantee
… And if you act now, receive a fourth white paper at no charge (which they waited until the end of the email to explain). Call me for more information at…
As an aside — a couple of my colleagues and I joke around hard… I mean wit-and-sarcasm-that-hurts-more-than-a-gut-shot hard… and because of some of the blows I’ve been able to land they joke that I should own the website IBelittleYou.com. If I did this post would be on there. But truly, I break this email down in order to teach, not to insult. I’m sure the person who wrote the email is an incredibly intelligent person who regularly gets results from their marketing — I’m just trying to provide insight into how I would get more and bigger results using the same offer. I mean this analysis in the most productive, least destructive way and hope it is taken as such.
Back to the assault…
So I have three major complaints with this email — and can offer three major revisions that I believe would drastically improve results.
My complaints:
My revisions explained:
With those recommendations, do you want to give it a try and see how your email comes out?
I have, and here’s my email (admittedly my first-draft):
(Before we get started I’ll point out — I wrote 2 headlines for split testing purposes. Test one to 200, test another to 200, and if there’s a clear winner roll that one out. If there’s no clear winner I’d either test again to an additional 200 each or go with the safe, offer-related, non-”creative” headline.)
SUBJECT: Would you let my experts write a Free White Paper for you?
SUBJECT: How Lack-Of-Information-Itis is killing your salesBODY:
Dear Roy,
I’d like to have one of my IT experts write a free white paper for you. But first, I have to let you in on a disturbing trend.
Let me explain. There’s a real problem sweeping through the IT industry. I call it “Lack-Of-Information-Itis.” It’s a condition that happens when a buyer thinks they want your solution… but doesn’t have quite enough information to make the purchase.
The tragedy is how quickly this disease is killing sales — even though it’s completely preventable.
Luckily, there’s a simple cure and it will take you almost no effort to implement. In fact, our new Lead Nurturing Program annihilates Lack-Of-Information-Itis at the source. It presents customers that are ready to buy to your sales team on a silver platter. And it saves them days of time and effort because the buyers we bring you are already fully educated as to how your specific solution will benefit them.
This leads to more sales, and also happier customers who are easier to support because they understand what they’re buying before they get it.
Here’s what we do for you:
- Our team of experts will write an eBook on a relevant topic to your customer base, to attract interest of qualified prospects.
- We’ll manage the syndication and promotion of your eBook across our network of sites to actually do the work of bringing qualified prospects into the fold. When prospects download the eBook we’ll collect their information and send it to you while they’re still hot.
- Normally my experts also write 3 custom White Papers to supplement the eBook and teach the prospect exactly what your product can do for them. These lead your prospects down the garden path directly into your sales cycle, fully informed and free of Lack-Of-Information-Itis. Respond before March 31st and I’ll have my experts write 4 White Papers for you — the 4th one is on my dime!
- We shoulder the risk. We have guaranteed lead minimums determined before we start, and if we can’t live up to our promise of a predetermined number of qualified leads that makes sense for your business, we’ll refund your entire project fee. It literally is ZERO risk to get started.
This integrated treatment for Lack-Of-Information-Itis has proven itself over and over again — including for other tech companies like Joe-Blow Technotronics and MegaBucks Techno Corp., as you can read about on our website at www.example.com/case-studies/. (Of course, we could show you success stories all day but the most important thing is to prove it for yourself by giving it a try in your business.)
What to do next:
I want you to get a hold of me. I want to show you how this whole program works — and most importantly how this whole program will work for you.
If you’ll call or email me to start the conversation, I’ll give you a free white paper I’ve put together called “How to Use Lead Nurturing and White Papers to Make Selling Easy and Fun (And Make A Lot More Sales While You’re At It).” There’s no obligation with this white paper — it’s designed to inform whether you bring in my team now or later. (And if you really wanted, this white paper gives you enough information to put together a program like this on your own and start making more sales immediately.)
Here’s my email … example@example.com … and here’s my phone number … 123-456-7890 … I want you to get a hold of me now, so I can send you the free white paper and start our conversation.
I expect to fill up quick.
There’s only so much time in the day, and although our tech experts verge on genius, they haven’t figure out how to stretch time yet. So we can only take a limited number of businesses right now to put together a lead nurturing program for you. Call now because I’d hate for you to be the one I have to say “no” to.
Bill Smith,
XYZ Publishers
What do you think?
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